Apparatus is presently available for bending a wire to form a hook, especially for hooking the free end of a coil spring. Examples of such devices are disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,405,742 issued Oct. 5, 1968 to Arthur W. Guenher and Egon Hildebrandt and U.S. Pat. No. 3,874,425 issued Apr. 1, 1975 to Arthur W. Guenther. In machines of this type the head performing the bending operation is positioned lateral to the axis of the wire and consequently the machine occupies a considerable amount of space. Also where the head requires a larger area of adjustment to perform bends of different radii and configuration, the distance traversed by the wire holding device is greater. Both the size of the apparatus and the movements it performs make it relatively costly in manufacture and in energy consumption.
It is an object of the present invention to provide an improved method and apparatus for hooking the free end of a coil spring , in which the area where the operation is performed, and the space occupied by the apparatus, is minimised.
It is a further object of the invention to provide an apparatus, for bending a wire to form a hook, which is less costly to manufacture and uses less energy than known devices.